"The point is that far too often the instantaneous reaction to tragedies is misguided and myopic, focusing on the least sympathetic protagonists and ignoring anything else that doesn't fit the narrative that's easiest to accept. The larger problem is that law enforcement and legislators are especially prone to act on this limited (or willfully ignored) information, and that results in all sorts of questionable actions and terrible laws -- things that negatively affect the general public. "

No, saying that "posting your kids is just doubly wrong" is incorrect. The fault lies not with the poster (after all, the picture in question is completely harmless) but with the administrator twisting the law to publicly seek revenge.

Whilst I agree with you that any public figure has to either be utterly meticulous about anything they post on a social media site or downright crazy to do so, in this case it is not the poster that is at fault.

Kinda, but as has been said many times before, Google can't imprison, torture or execute me. I could put up with customised ads if it was a straight fight between the two. I think it'd be a toss-up who won as well.

I read a similar article elsewhere yesterday, and as someone that's been playing all kinds of games for almost 40 years (and who *hated* the 'violent games make kids violent' BS), I have to say it's intuitively correct -

Badly designed games piss me off. Well designed games are at least cathartic and at best make me happy. Even if I'm blowing away everything in sight.

It may well be a comparatively good hit rate compared to other facial recognition systems, that's not the problem. The problem is that a system with an error rate of 20% is/will be viewed as as good as a fingerprint match because computers. Combine that with stuff like Gorgon Stare -

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_stare)

(www.sncorp.com/pdfs/isr/gorgon_stare.pdf) 6.9MB PDF

and you end up with Guantanamo Bay full of US citizens detained without trial for undisclosed reasons.

The USAF seems to have pulled funds from the program for FY-13, but given the metadata requirement for Gorgon Stare I'm sure you can think of another agency that would be willing to take it up. It's cheap, too.